


Empty Streets

by buzzedbee20



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Gen, promptfest IX, sad Neal is sad, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 05:18:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3475922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buzzedbee20/pseuds/buzzedbee20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since Peter's been gone, Neal can't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Streets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hurinhouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hurinhouse/gifts).



> A/N: This was a fill I did for hurinhouse for elhiarhodan's Promptfest IX. It was my first White Collar fest and I had SO much fun! I literally cannot wait for the next one to come around.

Three weeks into Peter’s incarceration, the White Collar team is no closer to getting him out, and Neal is walking the streets at night, again. 

He never strays outside of his radius, and he knows better than to get too close to the edge, but he can’t sleep. He can’t stay inside June’s house, sitting at his kitchen table, staring at the spot where he last saw his father anymore. 

His watch says 3:22 am. He won’t be any good in the office without at least two cups of coffee, and Jones will ask if he’s okay while knowing he’s really not, and Diana will give him her most _Peterish_ look, but withhold her comments. Peter would say something.

Peter would call him into his office, asking him where he was. Peter would know, because Peter would have checked his tracking data before he went to bed. Peter would call him now, and ask him why he wasn’t in bed. Just like he used to when Neal was grieving over Kate. But Peter isn’t here. 

The truth of it is, it’s Neal’s fear for Peter that’s keeping him up at night. He’s been to jail, both as a convict and a snitch, and it wasn’t easy for him either time. Peter’s a full-blown fed, and even in AdSeg, he’s in danger. Every day that Neal can’t find James is another day that Peter is in danger. And tonight, Elizabeth had come over. 

She asked him how the investigation was going, and he told her that Mozzie was following up on a lead. He didn’t tell her that he’d already heard from Mozzie, and the news wasn’t any different or any good. James was gone. The man who was supposed to teach him right and wrong had betrayed him, and didn’t even spare a glance back to see the havoc he’d wrought. Neal hadn’t expected him to, but he had hoped he would, and in the absence of that hope, restless despair had settled in, keeping him awake and brooding. 

The streets near June’s mansion are empty, quiet and devoid of life for the entire twenty blocks that he’s traveled. Everyone in the neighborhood is tucked safely away in their homes; their slumbers are peaceful. Neal doesn’t have a home. He never did, and if he can’t get Peter out, he never will. 

He checks his watch again. 3:34. Four hours from now, he’ll have to start all over again. He’ll have to go into the office, and hope that the cracks in his ever-thinning veneer of confidence don’t show. He has to hope that he’ll find James again, or think of a plan that will get Peter out, legally. He’ll be low on options, and low on energy. He turns for home. He was wrong. Tomorrow he’s going to need three cups of coffee.


End file.
